Advertisement (Ad) blocking or ad filtering refers to the process of removing or altering advertising content, in most cases, from a webpage. Advertising can exist in a variety of forms including pictures, animations, embedded audio and video, text, and pop-up windows. Typically, web browsers offer an ad blocking solution which may target certain file formats that are used to deliver the ads or target uniform resource locators (URLs) that are the source of the ads. To users, the benefit of ad blocking includes quicker loading and a cleaner looking web page free from advertisements. Furthermore, blocking an ad can lead to lower resource waste (bandwidth, CPU, memory, etc.), and privacy benefits through the exclusion of tracking and profiling activities conducted by ad delivery platforms.
Embodiments of the present disclosure and their advantages are best understood by referring to the detailed description that follows. It should be appreciated that like reference numerals are used to identify like elements illustrated in one or more of the figures, wherein showings therein are for purposes of illustrating embodiments of the present disclosure and not for purposes of limiting the same.